Case review body rejects grounds for Bamber to appeal

The Criminal Cases Review Commission has refused to refer the case of Jeremy Bamber, who was convicted of murdering five members of his family in 1985, back to the court of appeal.

- Simon Hattenstone

The CCRC, whose chair resigned in January and whose chief executive resigned this week after successive justice secretaries declared the miscarriage of justice review body unfit for purpose, has spent four years examining four of the 10 grounds Bamber's lawyers said undermined the safety of his conviction. It will continue to examine the other six.

In its provisional statement of reasons, the CCRC said the four grounds did "not currently reach the threshold for a referral to the court of appeal". Bamber has a right to challenge the provisional decision, and his legal team said they would seek a judicial review of the decision.

The White House Farm murders case is among the most infamous and controversial of the 20th century. In August 1985, Bamber's parents, Nevill and June, his sister, Sheila Caffell, and her six-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas, were killed. Initially, police concluded Caffell, who had been hospitalized with paranoid schizophrenia, had killed the family at their farmhouse in Essex with one of her father's guns.

But in 1986, Bamber, then 24, was convicted of the murders. There was no direct evidence linking him to the killings and Bamber has always maintained his innocence.